Alien Research

CHAPTER 90

I FELL INTO JEFF’S ARMS, which was a relief in so many different ways. “You’ve still got it.”

“Yeah, you make sure I have to practice all the time so I never lose it. Let’s get out of here, baby.”

He wasn’t wrong about wanting to leave—the facility was starting to fall down around us. On the plus side, if we were all buried that would save a lot on funeral costs since we were already so very far underground. Shockingly, didn’t find this all that much of a comfort.

Jeff tried to get us to Buchanan, who in turn was trying to get to where I assumed his power cube entry point was. Gower and White were literally dragging Chuckie out of the way of falling chunks of building. Chuckie was staring up at the ceiling where Naomi had gone. I didn’t want to contemplate what he was thinking or feeling.

“Kitty!” Adriana had her hand extended near absolutely nothing I could see. She’d come using the power cube gate, too, I assumed, meaning she was probably near her cube entry. “I can get us out! Hurry!”

“Malcolm! Get everyone to Adriana!” My bellowing wasn’t up to Jeff’s standards, but I made do. Buchanan heard me and ran toward Gower and the others, which was good, because a chunk of concrete hit right where he’d been standing.

White shoved Gower and Chuckie toward Adriana as Jeff headed us for her as well. Caught movement out of the side of my eye—LaRue and Reid were up and running away, toward the hallway. “No, we have to catch them!” I wrenched out of Jeff’s arms and took off.

Heard Jeff shouting to the others as I rounded the corner and got into the hallway. The door was open. Well, it was crushed, either by Naomi or by the collapsing building, which was also by Naomi in that sense, and there was a big hole where the door had been. Good enough for Stop the Crazed Clones Work. I sped up.

Heard the pounding of feet behind me. “Where are you going?” Jeff asked, as he caught up to me. “And Richard, why the hell didn’t you go with the others?”

“Aside from the fact that I slipped because of the various fluids on the floor you mean? I presume you’re going to need me more and I work better with your wife than you do, Jeffrey.”

“Wise man probably has a point, Jeff,” I said quickly, before Jeff could argue. We were in the giant cave of monolithic mainframes. Amazingly enough, they were all intact and their room wasn’t falling apart. Yet. Presumed it was reinforced. Also presumed this wouldn’t last.

“Where to?” Jeff asked as we rounded a corner and somehow were facing a wall I hadn’t expected. “I ask because this doesn’t look like the exit, and breaking through walls down here means we’re still underground.”

Resisted the urge to curse. “This is a maze. Somewhere on the other side is the exit. We actually have two to choose from, if I can find them. I guarantee the Crazed Super Twins know where the hell they’re going. I, on the other hand, suck at mazes. I’ve been through this in the dark and have no idea how to backtrack. Don’t take this the wrong way, Mister White, but we’d have been better off with Malcolm along.”

“Not necessarily,” White said. “There’s more than one way to work a maze, Missus Martini. Jeffrey, if you would be so kind as to help me?”

With that, White leaned against the nearest mainframe to us. Jeff did the same. They both pushed. Heard more explosions. Backtracked a bit and looked around another monolithic mainframe to see a fireball billowing out of the hallway we’d just left.

Decided I could help push and rejoined the men. “We’re playing dominoes?”

“Only if it knocks them all down,” White said. “Harder, children. Time is of the essence.”

“Hadn’t noticed,” Jeff said, sarcasm knob at eleven and rising.

“On three,” White said. “One . . . two . . . three.” We all shoved as hard as we could, and the mainframe rocked a little. “Harder . . . again . . . and once more with feeling.”

He was right, our last push did the trick and the mainframe went over. It slammed into another, which also went over, and slammed into another, and so on. The slamming sound stopped after about six, though.

White took one of my hands and Jeff took the other. “We’ll need to go fast,” Jeff said as we all backed up. “They’re pretty slick on the outside.”

We took off running and went up the side of the first mainframe. It was hard, but Jeff got to the top and dragged me and White along. The next part was tricky, since the boxes were at an angle to each other, like the straightest little mountain range ever. But we were moving at Jeff’s fast hyperspeed, meaning that we were able to jump and slide and jump again and keep on going.

“Why didn’t Naomi find out who the Mastermind was?” Jeff asked as we reached the last fallen mainframe and he pulled me up onto the top of the next one, which was upright.

“Because she’s afraid that she’ll discover it’s Chuckie.”

“Is it?” Jeff asked, as we looked around to determine where to go.

“No. But I can guarantee that Reid and LaRue were thinking of him as the Mastermind when Naomi grabbed us and was digging around in our minds.”

“Not that I disagree with your theory, but why are they still trying so hard to make us believe that Charles is the one in charge?” White asked.

“Going to let the Scott Baio joke pass because we’re busy. And, as for why, other than that they’re really stuck on a theme whether it works or not? The Mastermind hates Chuckie, and he wants him to be the fall guy for all of this. LaRue and Reid said he’d known Naomi would OD, so that means the Mastermind had them ready in case they were captured and questioned.”

“Makes sense,” Jeff said, pointing toward what I was fairly sure was the far wall. “I think I see the way out. Or it could just be some walls down.” Part of why we could see what I hoped was the wall we were looking for was indeed because the building was falling apart and therefore light was coming in from the upper levels and though fallen interior walls.

“Walls down probably are the way out, Jeffrey,” White said, as he took the lead and we started running and jumping onto the tops of each mainframe.

We’d just had to separate—White jumped left while Jeff and I jumped right—to avoid a chunk of ceiling that fell onto the mainframe we’d all been on, when something made me turn around. Lights were coming at us from behind. “Are those toy planes?”

“I think they’re . . . drones? Small ones, but . . . Uncle Richard! Watch out behind you!”

Jeff’s bellowing did two things—alerted White to the new danger which was good, and caused a reverberation that seemed to be the last straw for this area, which was bad, since that meant more ceiling gave way, meaning some of the servers we were hoping to leap onto now either had rubble on them or were down.

The servers were a good fifteen feet tall, the metal they were encased with was slick, it was dark, and we had to jump from server to sever while the room shook and parts of it fell around us. That wasn’t so bad. Being shot at by small flying drones while we were doing all of that was the really bad part.

“Down!” Jeff said as he pulled me to the right and a drone whizzed by. I lost my balance and went over the side. Fortunately Jeff had a hold of my hand and he was able to drag me back up.

“Where’s Richard?” I didn’t see White anywhere.

He’d been a couple servers away from us so we leaped toward where we’d seen him last. We couldn’t get onto the actual server because it had taken a direct hit from a big chunk of ceiling and was down.

Made it to the server nearest this one and looked over the edge. White was on top of the downed server, dodging drones.

Jeff got onto his stomach and reached his arm down. “Uncle Richard, jump!”

Decided I needed to help and the best help I could give was to get rid of the drones. Dug around in my purse and pulled out my new Glock, flipped off the safety, and took aim.

Mom had worked with me a lot on both rapid-fire and moving target techniques and I was a really good shot by now. Set my sights on the nearest drone and fired.

Hit it three times and it exploded. Happily the debris didn’t hit either Jeff or White.

Did the same with the next two, one of which took five shots to go boom, and one that took four. But three drones down wasn’t bad.

Until I looked around and realized two things. One was that there were a lot more than three drones flying around here.

The other was that they were all heading for me.